Tag Archives: Fascism

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Gay rights movement is killing religious liberty and conscience protection in America

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Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign
Obama speaks to the Human Rights Campaign

I wrote a couple of posts last week about how gay rights was destroying religious liberty in Canada. The first was about how Christian colleges and universities are being made illegal, the second about how parents were being prevented from opting out of gay indoctrination in public schools (schools run by the government, that the parents pay for).

But it’s not just happening in Canada, there is a lot of bad news down here as well.

Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew and a conservative, writes about the latest at the Daily Wire:

In the latest sign that the judiciary has gone completely off the rails, a judge has now forced the owners of ChristianMingle.com, Spark, to include same-sex matches on their website. Two gay men decided that there simply weren’t enough gay dating websites on the internet, and sued ChristianMingle.com in 2013. Now, under the settlement agreement, the webpage asks merely whether you are a man or a woman, rather than a “man seeking a woman” or a “woman seeking a man.” According to The Wall Street Journal, “Spark agreed that within two years, it would adjust other searching and profile features to give gay and lesbian singles a more tailored experience.” The terms of the settlement also open up CatholicMingle.com, AdventistSinglesConnection.com, and BlackSingles.com to same-sex searches.

[…]The lawsuit and settlement reveal one fundamental truth: for the LGBT community, acceptance and tolerance aren’t enough. They want full-scale approval of their activity from religious Americans, and they won’t stop until government shoves that approval down religious throats at point of bayonet.

This column by Dr. Michael Brown examines several relevant items in an article posted at The Stream, most of which have been discussed on this blog before.

Here’s a new one:

Sadly, rather than refuse to comply with this ungodly and unjust ruling, ChristianMingle.com has agreed to introduce same-sex searches within the next two years, with Shapiro noting that the “terms of the settlement also open upCatholicMingle.com, AdventistSinglesConnection.com, and BlackSingles.com to same-sex searches.” As he correctly states, “This is pure insanity.”

From a scriptural point of view, this is what Jesus warned about when He said, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). Unless ChristianMingle.com agreed to these terms simply to buy time, they have now sold their Christian soul in order to save their business, which is the guaranteed path to spiritual suicide.

But it gets worse.

If gay activists like Dan Savage have their way (and remember that Savage’s allies include the current president of the United States), Christians will not be allowed to hold to biblical morality in any setting, since our alleged homophobia is directly linked to a radical Muslim slaughtering gays and lesbians in a gay bar. In the aftermath of the Orlando massacre, Savage wrote, “Love is the cure—love and gun control and fully funded mental-health services and zero tolerance for anti-gay and anti-trans bigotry with no exceptions for ‘religious beliefs,’ sincerely held or otherwise.

“No sanctuary for liars, no safe place for bigots, no refuge for haters.” That means “zero tolerance” for people like you and me because of our “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

In his podcast, Savage makes himself perfectly clear: It is time to make “demands” on our society, including “an end to homophobia and to transphobia and a demand for accountability for those who promote it whether they’re promoting it in a church or a mosque or a legislature” — and bear in mind that Savage and his allies characterize traditional Judeo-Christian teaching on LGBT issues to be homophobic and transphobic.

Yes, a gay activist is demanding that Christians be held accountable for believing the Bible.

In the Daily Wire article I linked above, Ben Shapiro had this to say about what comes next:

The next steps for the left include removing non-profit status for any religious institution that “discriminates” against same-sex marriage, then suing those institutions under “anti-discrimination” laws; removing accreditation from schools that refuse to teach the beauty and joy of homosexuality and transgenderism; and finally, targeting parents who homeschool by refusing their legitimacy and calling their children truant.

All of this is coming, and it’s coming soon.

We’d better start preparing the resistance. We’re already late in starting.

What I’m seeing in the church, especially among young, unmarried happy-clappy Christian women, is a complete lack of awareness of the threats outlined by Shapiro and Brown. They aren’t following the news, and they often support the secular left, for causes like universal health care (= universal abortion) and to stop “global warming”. Everything is decided based on emotions and peer approval – no Christian wants to be the “bad guy” who sticks up for the Christian worldview, and keeps informed by reading and studying. Almost nothing is being done by young Christians to prepare educationally, professionally and financially for these challenges. Almost no one is planning to have an influence, either as singles or through a carefully-planned marriage that results in influential, effective children.

News

Virginia governor vetoes religious liberty bill, calls freedom of religion an “oxymoron”

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

The Weekly Standard reports:

Governor Terry McAuliffe of Virginia decried having to “veto a so-called ‘religious freedom’ bill. It’s such an oxymoron,” on WTOP radio Wednesday.

The bill that McAuliffe vetoed is a short one, and simply states that religious organizations or clergy should not be required to participate in the solemnization of marriages and should not be penalized for their refusal to do so. Its language specifically aimed to protect the actions of those “with a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman.”

It is not uncommon for Democrats to question religious freedom legislation, saying that it goes beyond defending religious freedom and into anti-LGBT discrimination.

[…]Upon celebrating the Supreme Court’s blocking of Texas abortion restrictions, McAuliffe said that Virginia was a few years ahead of the Supreme Court, and that these laws were enacted to shut down “women’s health clinics,” which, according to Gov. McAuliffe, “operate with no profit margin as it is.”

“I’m a very fiscally conservative, pro-business Democrat,” McAuliffe said directly before rebuking a bill passed by the Virginia General Assembly to scuttle government funding for Planned Parenthood.

Every day, it seems like some new assault on Constitutional freedoms by secular leftist fascists who want to force their views on others using the power of the government.

Here’s what Jesus says about marriage.

Matthew 19:1-11:

1 Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

2 And large crowds followed him, and he healed them there.

3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause?”

4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,

5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8

He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.

9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

10 The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given.

Terry McAuliffe thinks Jesus is wrong about that, and everyone who votes for Democrats like Terry McAuliffe affirms that Jesus has no authority on moral issues.

To be a Christian, minimally, is to be a follower of Jesus Christ. That means that we accept what Jesus teaches, on whatever he teaches about. We don’t overturn the teachings of Jesus in order to make people who are rebelling against God feel better about their rebellion. It is central to the Christian worldview that Christians care more about what God thinks of them than what non-Christians think of them. But I do think that we need to do everything that is legal to protect our religious liberty, so that being faithful is no harder for us than it needs to be.

News

Canadian court rules that Christian university cannot uphold Christian moral values

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Canada Election 2015: Socialists in red, Communists in Orange, Conservatives in blue
Canada Election 2015: Socialists in red, Communists in Orange, Conservatives in blue

This article about religious liberty in Canada is from Vancouver Sun. (H/T Glenn)

Excerpt:

Ontario’s top court has dismissed an appeal from a private Christian university that forbids sexual intimacy outside heterosexual marriage, denying its proposed law school accreditation in the province.

The ruling from the Ontario Court of Appeal on Wednesday dealt a significant blow to Trinity Western University in a legal battle which pitted freedom of religion against equality rights.

A panel of three appeal court judges found that while the university’s religious freedom had been infringed upon, the institution discriminated against the LGBTQ community.

Trinity Western — which is fighting similar cases at appeal courts in Nova Scotia and British Columbia — expressed disappointment at the ruling, saying it would be taking its fight to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The Ontario case saw the Evangelical Christian institution based in Langley go up against the Law Society of Upper Canada after the regulatory body voted not to accredit the university’s planned law facility.

At the heart of the dispute was Trinity Western’s “community covenant” or code of conduct, which all students are required to agree to.

The key point about the code of conduct is that it doesn’t discriminate against any particular group, e.g. – LGBT. It also forbids excessive drinking and premarital sex by heterosexuals:

It includes requiring students to abstain from gossip, obscene language, prejudice, harassment, lying, cheating, stealing, pornography, drunkenness and sexual intimacy “that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman.”

Now read this next part carefully. Although there was no legal support for denying a Christian university religious liberty and freedom of association, there was the hurt feelings of the LGBTQ community:

“The part of TWU’s Community Covenant in issue in this appeal is deeply discriminatory to the LGBTQ community, and it hurts,” the appeal court ruling said. “The LSUC’s decision not to accredit TWU was indeed a reasonable conclusion.”

In Canada “it hurts” means the end of human rights like religious liberty and freedom of association. Why? Because the Christian community in Canada has – for decades – voted to increase the size of government at the expense of liberty, in order to get free stuff. It doesn’t matter if the Christians who wanted a Christian university are hurt. Or that the Christian students at TWU are hurt. Only the hurt of the LGBT community matters, and their hurt changes laws, criminalizes dissent and annihilates natural rights. There are no such things as freedom of religion and freedom of conscience in Canada. There never was free speech, either. Anything that might hurt the feelings of left-wing groups has to be made criminal.

I’ll put this as plainly as anyone can: Canadian “Christians” have been voting to transfer wealth and power to a big secular government for years. They wanted government to cover health care, and now the government thinks that health care is providing free sex changes, free IVF and free abortions. Canadian “Christians” wanted their 30 pieces of silver more than they wanted the freedom to act as if the Bible was true in public. It turns out that the more wealth and power that you transfer to a secular government, the more likely they are to abuse that wealth and power in trampling out any ideology that interferes with their buying votes from their favored special interest groups.